The thought of crashing, as any prudent person would imagine, doesn't sit too comfortably with Phoebe Treseder.
But once the 17-year-old eases into the saddle of her 10-speed Scott Foil bike she likes to believe she's "mentally tough and hard sort of girl".
The Iona College student's phobia of crashing is quite understandable, considering a car hit her from behind near the Te Mata cheese factory a few years ago.
"I had a few grazes on my back so I was very lucky," Treseder reveals, adding it did play on her mind a little for a while but she's well and truly over it these days.
It's just as well because anything otherwise would have meant she wouldn't be jetting off today at 1pm to Noosa, Queensland, to compete in the four-day Australian Under-19 Road Championship from Thursday to Sunday as part of the New Zealand Under-19 women's squad.
The year 12 pupil will compete in the 12.7km individual time trial on Thursday in Noosaville and then have a rest day on Friday.
The gruelling four-lap, 80.7km road race kicks in on Saturday at Boreen Point.
The women's championship wraps up with the 30-minute by three-lap criterium to be raced clockwise on a 915m track at Girraween on Sunday.
The other members of the Kiwi contingent, under coach Denise Brown, of Palmerston North, are Maggie Allen (Hamilton), Maxina Cottam (New Plymouth), Georgia Vessey (Alexandra), Alice Bennett (Christchurch), and Caitlin Holmes (Tasman).
"Criterium is not my favourite event because it's too tight a course with too many riders so you can have crashes," Treseder says, expecting to finish in the top bunch.
She has hopes of an "awesome" top-10 finish in her preferred road race and anywhere from a 15 to 20 placing in the time trial.
The Hawke's Bay Ramblers Cycling Club member, who is under the tutelage of coach Ivar Hopman, finished 14th in the Canberra Tour last year but she hastens to add the champs this week will be unlike the tour where stages enable riders to improve their standings.
"They put tacks on the road in Canberra so six Kiwis went over it and all had punctures," she says, convinced the competitive Ockers will do anything to gain timely metres.
What catches the eye about Treseder is that she has only embraced cycle-dom for four years, giving up triathlon because it demanded too much time from her school work.
"I used to do athletics before that but then I got bored with it so I got out of there," says the teenager who hugs the feeder roads in the backdrop of Havelock North one to two hours a day in training.
She thanks her sponsors, AvantiPlus, of Hastings, and coach Hopman as well as her parents, Julieann, a police officer, and Steve, a Waipukurau sheep and beef farmer.
"Ivar's an excellent coach. I love him because he energises me and gives me tips so he's wicked," says Treseder, who has ambitions to compete in Europe like fellow Rambler Ashleigh Neave is doing now.
Hopman has organised a spin-class on exercycle machines at the PG Arena gym in Taradale tomorrow to raise funds for Regan Gough who is jetting off to Belgium on July 10 before heading to the Junior World Track Championship in Glasgow, Scotland, from August 7-11.
"People will pay $30 for an hour's ride to raise funds for me so I'll gladly take what I can get because it's pretty expensive to go on overseas tours," says Gough, 16, a Central Hawke's Bay College pupil who is the reigning U19 national omnium track champion.
Another Hopman-coached rider, Ian Seddon, is off to the UCI World Championship for Masters in Italy on September 19.